World of warcraft account security

Keep your CDs and CD key safe. Â You might need these if you have to contact Blizzard to get your account reinstated.

Have a Strong Password. Avoid commonly used words, names, personal data such as birthdays, and use a combination of letters and numbers.Â The passwords â€œqwertyâ€ and â€œabc123â€ are going to get your account hacked.

Don’t share accounts.Â Don’t give your password to anyone else, not even family.Â Has anyone else heard other players in their guild saying â€œbut I only let my brother use it onceâ€ from players who then discover that their charming younger brother has either deleted stuff, sold gear, bought loads of crap from AH you don’t want, or boasted and spread your password all around his school. On a side note, why is it always â€œmy younger brotherâ€ who does this?Â Don’t any of you have grannies with a fetish for vendoring Tier sets? [Edit: I’m sorry I spoke, it seems there is

Don’t click strange links in websites, especially if you’re surfing the dodgier side of the web ‘accidently’ waiting for free software to fall off the back of a lorry. Yes, I do know about your passion for midget pron.Â Be ashamed!

Watch out for phishing. Chances are, that email isn’t real.Â There are some easy ways to recognise fake phishing emails.Â Check for spelling, grammar, and downright bad manners.Â Never reply with your account and email.Â Never click a link in an email. Never enter your password at a dodgy website.Â You might as well just mail them your credit card and a birthday card!

Never log onto World of Warcraft from a computer that isn’t your own, or one you know is 100% free of virus, keyloggers and evil software. Even if you practice perfect Internet security at home, youâ€™ll waste all that effort if you log on from a friendâ€™s machine that has been compromised. If in doubt, miss the raid, and grovel to your guild leader later.Â You know he likes grovelling anyway.

Guild leaders, don’t let any guild members have access to your guild bank unless they have an authenticator. You can set this up in the guild ranks.

Get an authenticator. They’re easy to set up and use, and very cheap.Â I’m terrible at losing mine, so I threaded a big shiny cord through it, and now it doesn’t get lost in my Desk-mess of D00M. Â On a side note,you also get a cute ingame pet.

Be careful which addons you download. Choose a site that you know is safe and stick to it for all your downloads.

Keep yourÂ operating system up to date.Â Windows isn’t the healthiest OS in theÂ world.Â No, it isn’t, and don’t start an argument about it.Â I’mÂ thrilled that you use linux, but some of us mortals have to make doÂ with Windoze, deal.Â Click Windows Update in the Start menu.

â€œSupporting these types of illicit services is not only against the Terms of Use, but it promotes botting, spamming, and other forms of exploitation — as well as account theft. While the promise of gold stockpiles and effortless level-85s may be tempting, you could end up paying more than just cash for sharing your account information with these companies. (Also, that gold you’re interested in buying? We’ve found that it is most commonly stolen from compromised accounts and turned around to be sold back to other players. Not cool.)â€

And in case you’re still dead set on giving your email account and password to a random foreign company whose business is based on violating Blizz’s terms of use:

â€œThrough our normal support processes and the assistance of players, we also find that many accounts that have been shared with powerleveling services are then hacked into months later, and all of the items on the account are stripped and sold off. Basically, players have paid money to these companies, sometimes large amounts, and they’re then targeted by these same companies down the road. We come across stories every week of the after-effects of players using these services, and some players now have to deal with long-term repercussions — in addition to consequences such as possible account suspension or closure, in many cases the companies they paid use their personal information to perpetrate identity theft and credit card fraud. These are long-lasting effects on players’ personal lives that can take years to recover from.â€

Ouch.
If you are desperate to make a whole load of gold really fast, you’re very welcome to read through all the free tips and strategies I post at the Gold Queen. Alternatively, can I convince you to follow one of my affiliate links and buy a gold guide instead?Resources:Massive Gold Blueprint20k leveling

Do you have any account hacking stories?

About the Author

The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.PS. If you do get hacked, visit the Blizzard Help I got Hacked Guide.

I believe you forgot to mention buying an authenticator or getting one. I have one, and I use it to log into any account safely. If I lose it I have to call Blizzard and verify the account to get it removed. I lost it, and had to get it removed till the new one arrived (Lucky for me I found it a week later but kept the new one just in case I ever needed it…or found someone who did not have one that needed one. It cost 6.00, rounded up is it like 6.50 or something like that. so anyhow, without I was hacked 3 times in one week!!! Im a guild leader so my guild lost alot, but on top of that,m I have 8 85’s…soi I lost alot as well from each of my toons. The authenticator I never realized how good it was till then…Now I swear and live by it. If ur interested here is the link where you can see it for yourself http://us.blizzard.com/store/search.xml?q=authenticator

I would like to add (having been hacked myself 🙁 but Blizzard were really good and got all my stuff back within 24hours ) to use a unique password just for WoW. And also for your email address that is associated with your WoW account, use another unique password. I think this is what got me; I was using a generic password that was both my WoW and email account. Whoever tried to gain control my account was also in my email account too – luckily I was trying to get online whilst they were trying to hack me. As a further measure, if you have a private email address (ie, not an online account like gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc), then reserve that for WoW usage and not general internet use!